Sunday, March 31, 2013

March 31, 2013: March 2013 Recap

[A recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying, which in this case began March 4th after the February recap on March 2-3.]
March 4: Popular Fiction: Cultural Work: A series on popular fiction begins with Jane Tompkins, Twilight, Oprah, and the question of how and why we analyze popular art.
March 5: Popular Fiction: Christian Novels: The series continues with one of the most under-narrated yet most consistently popular genres in American literature.
March 6: Popular Fiction: Small-Town Soaps: The genre that links seemingly contrasting authors Sinclair Lewis and Grace Metalious, as the series rolls on.
March 7: Popular Fiction: Guilty Pleasures: Thinking about the popular fiction we’re ashamed to love—yet love and read nonetheless!
March 8: Popular Fiction: Paradigm Shift: The series concludes with the complex question of how and why we disparage or value best-sellers.
March 9-10: Crowd-sourced Popular Fiction: Other AmericanStudiers weigh in on the week’s posts and topics.
March 11: Supreme Contexts: Marbury and Balance: A series on key 19th century Supreme Court decisions starts with the one that established the Court’s role and power.
March 12: Supreme Courts: Georgia and Sovereignty: The series continues with the cases that illustrate both the limitations and the possibilities of how the Court can respond to national issues.
March 13: Supreme Contexts: Dred Scott and Definitions: The case that represents a low point for the Court’s social role—but the height of its defining powers.
March 14: Supreme Contexts: Santa Clara County and Revision: The case that reimagined both the role of American businesses and one of our landmark laws, as the series rolls on.
March 15: Supreme Contexts: Plessy and Activism: The historical portion of the series concludes with a case that can and perhaps should shift our sense of “judicial activism.”
March 16-17: Supreme Contexts: The Cases Before Us: My take on a few of the lessons that such historical analyses of the Court can hold for very significant contemporary cases.
March 18: Spring in America: Williams and Eliot: Snowstorms be damned, a series on spring in America starts with two distinct but perhaps parallel poetic visions of the season.
March 19: Spring in America: “Appalachian Spring”: The series continues with the composer and work that helped bring America and classical music together.
March 20: Spring in America: “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”: The song that exemplifies why simple and symbolic can work just fine for social and political protest music.
March 21: Spring in America: Children’s Stories: Frog and Toad, Abdul Gasazi, and children’s stories of spring explorations, as the series rolls on.
March 22: Spring in America: The Mayflower and the Maypole: The series concludes with two very different sides to the Pilgrims/Puritans, as revealed by two spring images.
March 23-24: Crowd-sourced Spring: Responses and other spring thoughts from many fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours please!
March 25: National Big Read Recaps, Part 1: A follow up series to my roundtable on nominations for the Even Bigger Read, starting with Mary Rowlandson’s narrative.
March 26: National Big Read Recaps, Part 2: The series continues with a nomination of Letters from an American Farmer.
March 27: National Big Read Recaps, Part 3: The Day of the Locust, as the Even Bigger Read series rolls on.
March 28: National Big Read Recaps, Part 4: Why we should all read Invisible Man.
March 29: National Big Read Recaps, Part 5: James Welch’s Fool’s Crow, another nominee for a national Big Read.
March 30: National Big Read Recaps, Part 6: The series concludes with the case for Sebastian Junger’s War.
Next series starts tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Responses to any of these posts or series? Things you’d like to see on the blog? Guest post ideas? Share, please!

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